Obligatory Shopping
by Team Dragon Star
Summary: One-shot. This is part of Dragonball GT where Vegeta takes Bulla shopping, before Baby's attack on Vegeta begins (when he's in Gohan's body).


**Disclaimer : TDS does not own DBZ.**

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"Vegeta!"

The Saiyan prince scowled. He figured his chances of escaping without being noticed by the two females were slim to none. And when they teamed up on him like this, escaping was just a hopeless fantasy of his.

"Vegeta! Get your butt over here!" Bulma shouted for the umpteenth time from the confines of the kitchen inside the Capsule Corporation building. He scrunched his face in mockery and detest, imagining her ugly mug shouting at him from across the house, her wrinkles squeezing together and the bags under her eyes sagging down to her cheeks.

Vegeta sat up from his sprawled position on the couch and grabbed one of the large pillows. They were his only wall from being seen by the two women, and he was going to enjoy every moment that they didn't come storming into the living room to fetch him for their selfish needs and desires. It was always him. Why did it always have to be him?

His moment of peace didn't last very long, because in the next second, the ebony-haired Saiyan heard the threatening footfalls of the two blue-haired monsters coming to steal his dignity, like every other day of the week.

"Vegeta!" Bulma shouted again. She was standing only a few yards away from him now, on the opposite side of the coffee table in front of his couch. He was eternally grateful for the barrier that prevented her from yelling near his sensitive Saiyan ears. "Vegeta, why would you tell Bulla that she can't go shopping today? She did all her chores and her grades in school are excellent. She deserves a little shopping time. How dare you tell her she can't go!"

Vegeta gawked. "Woman! She's not just going to go shopping! She's going to have some boy come to our house and pick her up because she doesn't have a driver's license yet!"

"And whose fault would that be?" Bulma asked, dangerously placing her hands on her hips and glaring daggers at him for verbally assaulting her precious little angel.

"It's not mine!" Vegeta backfired defensively. "She failed her last three tests! Maybe if she didn't need some low-life teenage boy driving her around, then I'd let her go!"

The large pillow he was holding was snatched away from behind him, and Vegeta jumped, grabbing it and pulling it back. He wasn't the least bit surprised to find the other blue-haired female behind the unwarranted antics. And she had the nerve to smile at him.

"So, you'd let me go if I had a ride from someone else, Daddy?" she asked sweetly, but Vegeta knew the sour taste that always followed her sugary words.

"I don't see why not," he said, an angry tone evident in his voice. His daughter was smart beyond even his comprehension. She could weave her way through a maze of deceitful words and tricky riddles, and she could always emerge victorious in an argument. He wondered what she was up to now.

"Mo-om," Bulla whined, "How could you ever have decided to marry a jerk like Dad? He won't let me leave the house, even after I did everything he wanted me to do. I washed the dishes and cleaned my room. He even made me weed the front flower bed! And then he made me study for an hour, and he didn't even let me take a break. I mean, this is so unfair!"

"Vegeta," Bulma threatened slowly, drawing out each syllable of his name.

The Saiyan warrior's heart skipped a beat when she started tapping her foot on the hardwood floor. It was obvious that she was getting impatient and annoyed with him. And Vegeta found himself holding his breath when her arms crossed firmly over her chest and her face tightened, her eyebrows furrowing as they neared each other.

"What?!" he shouted at her, unable to contain the underlying, higher-pitched squeak, hidden deep within his suppressed terror of his wife's bad temperament.

"Go shopping with your daughter." Bulma's voice was firm, and her face was hard. She wasn't taking no for an answer.

"What? Why?" Vegeta whimpered. "Woman, I've been training since this morning."

"Get your lazy butt off that couch, Vegeta, and take your daughter shopping!"

Vegeta just glowered at her for a moment before deciding that it wasn't worth the trouble of getting into a long and arduous fight with her over something that could be finished within an hour or so… right?

"Fine," he pouted indignantly, standing up and touchdown-throwing the large pillow against the couch to show his distaste. He then folded his arms across his thick chest, making sure to avoid eye contact with the younger blue-haired female, and stomped over to the coat-rack in the corner of the living room. He pulled his black sleeveless vest off of one of the hangers and threw it on over the dark reddish-brown tank-top he was already wearing. He grabbed a pair of gloves off the table-stand near the exit and shoved his feet into a pair of steel-toed, brown-leather boots.

"Wow, you're mismatched," Bulla said haughtily, slipping on her bright crimson, three-inch heels.

"Watch your tone," Vegeta warned before holding the door open for her.

"Have a good time, you two!" Bulma called, waving at him from the other side of the room. Vegeta scrunched his nose in repugnance with the impulsive transformation of her disposition, now that she had attained her goal. It was always the same with that woman.

"Hnn," he grunted in reply as he stepped outside and slammed the door behind him, nearly shaking the entire Capsule Corporation complex. He knew she wouldn't be very happy with him when he got back, and she'd probably have a few words to say to him about it, but he could deal with that later.

He pulled out the keys from their usual place in his dark vests left pocket and hit the unlock button. The small blue hover-car beeped once when the lights blinked on and then off, indicating that it had received his key's signal and the doors had unlocked. Vegeta really didn't understand the point though, seeing as the car had no top, and anyone could just hop inside without unlocking any of the doors.

"I hope you brought your wallet, Daddy," Bulla smiled innocently, swinging her legs over the top of her door to get inside. Vegeta knew she only did it because he unlocked the doors prior, so he ignored her attempt at irritating him.

"You pull that little stunt one more time and I'm never taking you anywhere ever again. Do you understand me?" he said, narrowing his eyes at the young woman.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Dad."

"The hell you don't," he grimaced, "I told you to stay home today, and you went off and told your mother! Out of all the things that you could have done, Bulla, you went to your mother?!"

"What can I say? I wanted to go shopping. What was I supposed to do?"

Vegeta held in a snarl as he opened the driver's side door to get into the car, making a show of it. "Why don't you listen to your father," he said sarcastically, and then changed his tone, "instead of always trying to get me into trouble with that old woman."

Bulla laughed and Vegeta found the noise to be quite calming, in a way. And it certainly made the atmosphere a bit better than it had been. The last thing the Saiyan prince wanted was to be stuck shopping with Bulla, and having her hate him at the same time. He knew it was better to be on good terms with her when he held a credit card in his wallet. Especially because Bulma liked to make a point that they were rich and could afford to spend a little extra money on their daughter. And "a little extra money" always turned into something much worse when it was presented to the mischievous young woman.

But nevertheless, Vegeta was proud to be her father. She was arrogant and hot-headed, just like him, and she knew how to handle herself. The only problem, in his opinion, was that she got all of his good looks, too, and it attracted attention to her from pathetic Earthling boys.

"So, Dad," Bulla said, "I've decided that we're going to go to the mall."

"You've decided?" Vegeta asked indignantly.

"Well, if you want to get something somewhere else, we can go wherever you want, too," she said, and Vegeta impolitely snorted. She was dancing around her words again, and he was never very good at beating someone at anything other than fighting.

"You're just like your mother," he huffed.

"Thanks," she replied with a smile, but Vegeta just rolled his eyes and started the hover-car, pulling out of the driveway at almost the second the engine roared to life. Bulla squealed when he made a sharp turn onto the highway, cutting someone off. "Dad! What do you think you're doing?! You're going to kill someone!"

"Whatever. Let's just get this over with," he growled.

A few minutes into the ride later, a thought popped into Vegeta's head. Bulma had wanted for him to talk with his daughter about boys. At first, it had been out of the question. He thought that it had just been another task for him to do involving decimating his pride and entertaining her at the same time. But now that he was thinking about the whole picture, he figured that a car ride was as a good a setting as any for the annoying conversation. After all, he didn't want to think about what could go wrong if that vexing woman tried to explain it to their daughter instead. The Saiyan elite could only imagine the horror.

"Bulla," he began, trying to make himself sound as if bringing up the topic didn't bother him in the slightest, "I want to talk to you about something."

"Uh, oh," she said, rolling her eyes, "Don't yell at me for anything, Dad. I'm really not in the mood for it right now."

"What?!" Vegeta shouted unpleasantly, "Watch your mouth, young lady!"

After realizing that he was going to become the proud father of a baby girl, Vegeta had been introduced to all the things he would eventually call her as she grew older. Most of them were maddening, and he refused to be forced into calling her anything but Bulla, notwithstanding Bulma's many claims and assertions. And in spite of what he believed before, he was now calling her by every name in the book, much to his mortification and loathing.

"I'm not yelling at you for anything!" he barked, and then sycophantically frowned. "I was going to tell you that you aren't allowed to date until you're out of college…" He couldn't believe he was actually the one to start this conversation with his daughter.

But Bulla just laughed, making Vegeta's head snap up in infuriation. "Yeah, right."

"I'm serious! If you bring home a boy, I blast his head off!" he shouted, his voice as deep as thunder.

"Then I just won't bring any of them home."

"Them? Bulla! You're going to listen to me!"

"Or what?" she said with an amused smirk, and Vegeta pursed his lips together angrily. Why did she have to be such a pain all the time? "Dad… I was wondering if you could teach me to be a Super Saiyan. Wouldn't that be fun?"

"Oh, no," Vegeta threatened, "No changing the subject. We're going to talk about this until it's settled. Do I make myself clear?"

Bulla frowned and folded her arms over her chest, leaning back in the passenger's seat of the car and staring at the sky as the clouds moved along, and the tops of the trees passed by as the car continued moving. "Unfortunately," she softly mumbled.

"What was that?!" Vegeta shouted loudly, and then he gritted his teeth together in frustration. He now understood why he was always better at physical fighting that winning an argument. When he fought someone, all he had to do was kill the other person, and he wouldn't have to listen to them blather. But whenever he got into an argument, especially with the female side of his family, just knocking them out wasn't an option as tempting as the idea sounded, particularly now.

"Nothing," she muttered under her breath.

"Apologize!" Vegeta demanded.

"Sorry, Dad," she sneeringly drawled, but Vegeta wasn't going to go any further with that. The last thing he wanted was an argument about how her tone made her sound disrespectful, because he knew she would just deny it anyway, and say he wasn't hearing straight.

"Now," he continued, "No boys… Right?"

"Dad, I'm fifteen. There's no way that I'm not going to start dating until after college. I'll be an old lady by then and no one will like me. And you'll probably be dead before then anyway, so why do you care?"

"It's only a few years!"

"I'll be in my twenties! What if I meet a nice guy between now and then and I really like him? I'm not going to tell him to go away because my Daddy made me promise not to go out on dates."

"It's either you or me," he said, narrowing his eyes dangerously.

"Dad, you can't just kill every guy that I like. That's not fair."

"Sure it is."

"You know I'll just talk to mom about it if you keep saying that."

Vegeta turned his head, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to look at her in the most intimidating and threatening way he could manage. But the blue-haired teen was stubborn, and she didn't even flinch at his daunting glare. The Saiyan prince knew that if he'd placed that stare on anyone else in the entire universe, they would have cowered away from him in fright and immediately given up any argument against him.

"Nineteen," he said, "And that's my final offer. No boys until you're over nineteen years old."

"Technically, you can't tell me what to do when I'm eighteen because I'm considered an adult."

"And, technically," he mocked, "when you're an adult, I can kick you out of the house."

"Oh, come on, Dad! I'm fifteen. At the latest, I should be going on dates next year. A girl becomes a woman on her sixteenth birthday, after all. And that means that I can do what I want."

"Absolutely not. You may become an age where society considers you a woman, but I'm your father, and I know that you still act like a little girl!"

"I can't believe you!"

Vegeta looked to his right and pressed on the brakes, slowly bringing the car to a stop, and then turning onto the road that led to the mall. "We're here," he said flatly, turning into the nearest parking lot and slowly pulling into a parking space.

"You drive like an old woman," Bulla angrily muttered, tightening her arms across her chest and huffing as she immaturely threw her head back, her hair swirling around her face as she twisted her neck. Vegeta closed his eyes and let out an exhale that sounded more like a snarl as he cut the ignition and replaced the car key back into his dark vest's left pocket.

Bulla opened her door and quickly stepped out, already heading for the entrance to the mall.

Vegeta growled from deep in his throat before opening his door. He shut it behind him and followed after her, not concerning himself with uselessly locking the doors. There was nothing important in the vehicle anyway.

"Bulla!" he called out to her exasperatedly, but she ignored him and continued walking towards the door, just faster now that she knew he was following her. But after another few yards or so, she stopped and turned around heatedly.

"I know you don't want to be here with me, so then why don't you just leave?! Give me some money and just go home! I would fly home, but you're always too busy training Trunks to teach me anything, so what do I care?"

"You're a female," Vegeta scoffed, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world, and he was annoyed with the simple fact that he had to answer the damned question in the first place. "You don't need to train. And besides, Kakarot and I were saving the world before you were even born!

"And we defeated all of the serious threats so that our children wouldn't have to train like we did and fight off someone that could potentially kill you! We did that as fathers, and we did it with our children on our minds! That includes you, Bulla. Trunks fought by my side when I couldn't defeat an enemy on my own, and I had to watch him suffer because of that. I don't want the same thing to happen to you." He paused; he felt like the conversation was becoming too emotional for the occasion. "If all you really want to learn is how to fly, then fine, I'll teach you."

"Really?!" the blue-haired girl asked, her face lighting up at his promise. Vegeta wondered if she actually heard something other than that he was going to teach her how to fly. Sometimes she only heard him when he was giving her one thing or another.

When Vegeta finally caught up with her, Bulla began walking again, at his side.

"Wow, Daddy," she said with a smile, "You're really going to teach me how to fly? This is great. Can you teach me to become a Super Saiyan, too? I mean, I know you don't want me to fight, but I think it'd be cool just to know how. And then if something ever came up, I could—"

"Stop that," Vegeta snarled. "I don't care if everyone around you is dead, including me. I want you to run, do you understand me?! If there is someone powerful enough to get past me, to you, you are not allowed to fight!"

"Until I'm out of college?" she mocked.

"What?! Bulla, this is serious!"

"So are boys."

"Maybe about getting into your pants!"

"Daddy…" Bulla whined, a few people at the entrance looking over at them when Vegeta shouted. She let her long, blue hair fall in front of her face as they walked into the building and away from the awkward stare of many people. "You're embarrassing me…"

"Good!"

"Fine, whatever," she conceded softly, "I won't fight, okay? Just shush."

"Excuse me?" Vegeta asked, and Bulla put her hands up in defeat.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it, okay? Just stop embarrassing me, Dad," she pleadingly whimpered at him.

Vegeta grunted. "Teenagers," he said to himself, shaking his head in disappointment.

After a couple minutes, Bulla stopped walking and dared to lift her head, brushing her hair out of her eyes with her fingers. She turned her head left and then right, glancing around. Vegeta had kept walking, but now stopped, a few steps ahead of her.

"Well? What are you doing?" he asked, clearly aggravated just from being present in the mall.

Bulla mentally sighed, knowing that there was nothing she could do about that.

"Let's go this way," she said, pointing in the opposite direction that Vegeta had taken his few extra steps past her.

The Saiyan prince paused to leer at her before tightly folding his arms across his chest and following where her finger was pointing. Bulla followed after him at a quick pace.

"Why are you walking so fast? Slow down, will you?! And get your wallet out, Dad. This is going to take a while!"

And thus… Vegeta's first official shopping trip began…

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**Author's note:**

**Dear Fans,**

**I know I cut it short and the ending clearly sucked, but this was a mandatory fic that I had to complete by a certain date. And, if you've followed one of my fics before, you know that my best friend's name is "procrastination". But still, please R&R, and then maybe I'll write another one-shot as this one's sequel. ;) Thanks!**

**Yours Truly,**

**-Dark Phyre-**


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